School of War - Ep 210: Scott Boorman on Sun Tzu

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Scott Boorman, Professor of Sociology at Yale University and author of Three Faces of Sun Tzu, joins the show to discuss the world and ideas of Sun Tzu. ▪️ Times      •      01:48 Introduction     •      02:10 “Know your enemy”     •      05:18 The Protracted Game       •      09:59 Text and application     •      16:05 Warring states           •      21:14 Chinese thinking     •      24:58 Net assessment      •      29:05 Cunning     •      32:02 Omissions      •      37:05 Memorization          Follow along on Instagram, X @schoolofwarpod, and YouTube @SchoolofWarPodcast Find a transcript of today’s episode on our School of War Substack

Here's a good line I heard on social media earlier this week. In response to the successful decoy play run by the Air Force on Saturday, when a bunch of our stealth bombers flew very visibly over the Pacific, while the real strike package was moving quietly over the Atlantic, some anonymous wit tweeted, Sun Tzu says, when six B-2s fly west, look for seven more flying east. Well, we haven't done an episode on Sun Su yet here at School of War, yet he's arguably the author where the serious study of strategy as its own theoretical discipline

begins. Today, an introduction to the great thinker. Let's get into it. It is for a war. This Iraqi invasion of May December 7, 1941, a date which will live in him. A bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a state. We continue to face the great situation in grand. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing ground. We shall fight in the fields and in the street. For more, follow School of War on YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and Twitter. And feel free to follow me on Twitter at Aaron B. McLean.

Hi, I'm Aaron McLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I am delighted to welcome to the show today. Scott Borman. He is the author most recently of Three Faces of I've always said Sun Su, you're going to correct my pronunciation, Three Faces of Sun Su, analyzing Sun Su's art of war, a manual on strategy. Scott's a professor of sociology. at Yale University, author of numerous other articles, books, famously early in his career,

The Protracted Game, Owee-Chi interpretation of Maoist Revolutionary Strategy, which I also want to get into. Scott, thank you so much for joining the show. My pleasure. It's an honor to have you. There's obviously a link between this book that you wrote, really, in your youth, that made you famous, at least in the rather substantial circles of people who cared about communist strategy and the strategy of the communist Chinese. Tell us a bit about actually and how you came to be interested in these questions of strategy in China and their intersections? Well, in retrospect, and as any social scientists will tell you, retrospective perceptions are always tricky. I think the key was I was brought up in a family environment

where basically all this was present, even though going back to a very early age, I was unware of the present. So, for example, my father had a pamphlet left over from his naval service in World War II, which was entitled, Know Your Enemy, which of course, was a son's line. It was basically a manual of Japanese aircraft type. So he was based in Pearl Harbor doing table intel type stuff, just a Japanese language officer. And so for that reason, and also by virtue of my mother's background, she'd also been in China, including service. in World War II for which it was awarded the Medal of Freedom. Basically, it was ambient in my environment, let's say. So it would have been probably atypical if I hadn't picked up on some of this

or had to carry on the tradition. What is a little more atypical is that in my teenage years, by the way, I was homeschooled, never set from the classroom with one minor exception until I entered college. Basically, I decided that I would junk all this. become a mathematician. So I ended up implementing college. I started in pure math and shifted to applied math, but for a long time, certainly early career, my focus was mathematical, and to a certain extent I walked away from my family background. In long-term retrospect, that was probably serendipitous benefit because of the rise of computational and by extension, mathematical, machinery, which is foundational and outer art society, was not basically at the time I opted

for mathematics, but by background, including through college, or sort of a split screen between learning classical Chinese and doing Chinese scholarship and some publication along Mar and China lines, and then separately doing math type stuff. So those were my two strands, and they didn't particularly come together at that point, though they subsequently have. I remember encountering the idea that our early book in Henry Kissinger's On China. I can't remember going through the end notes. I don't know if he gave you credit or not. I don't recall offhand.

The idea is sort of ambient and modern circle of people who study, Chinese power, and in particular Chinese military, I can remember. I don't remember her name, but there was an article in the, Naval War College review about how the Chinese space program at that time resembled the game of Wei Chi. So basically at some point, as with any ideas, it sort of leaped the pond and became detached from whatever contribution I made to it. Well, say for just for a moment, just for those who may not know actually what we're referring

to, what is Wei Qi, what, or Go, you know, and what was the basic idea? Sure, the basic idea was there was a, let me develop in a couple of arts. the first part is that there is an ancient Chinese game, whether it's evolved significantly over the centuries, is debated, but teaching Chinese game called Ouichi, which is, for practical purposes, the same as the Japanese game, commonly called Go, and more commonly known in the West, under the Japanese title.

It then basically developed a rich strategic tradition, and my idea fueled in part by a couple of mentions, a couple of essays, Baumount Sadong was that the strategy that the Chinese communist used to win the Chinese revolution could be in part interpreted as a Ouichi strategy with, for example, the emphasis on rural bases and mobilizing the hinterland, translating into the aligning, I should say, on the edge of the board motif, which often starts our successful winning strategy in the game of Weichi, where you play pieces close to the edge of the edge of the world.

the board, but not too close to the edge. So actually, the latter theme came up in the one point at the low ebb of communist fortunes when during the period on the long march, there was actually a conference where one strand of the communist leadership, Chinese communist leadership at that time, wanted to decamp for Xinjiang and what's called China's far northwest. And they were opposed by Mao's faction, which argued for reestablishing the major base in China's near Northwest, which are Yan'an, and the Maoist, the short versions, the Maoist won the one, the one the debate. But basically, at that point, one gets the idea, or I got the idea that there might be a more than passing structural similarity between the strategy used to play and win the game of

Weichi and the strategy used for the communists to engineer what is probably in retrospect while the major turning points of modern world history. And part of this argument, whether it's your argument or a parallel argument, which at this point in 2025 has sort of achieved the status of cliché such that actually there's a reaction against it, is that, you know, the Chinese, the CCP, maybe sort of, you know, easterners in a general stereotypical way, they play Wei Chi, whereas in the West, we play chess and the strategic miscommunication is a collapse between the two. There's certainly a line of thinking along those lines. I am inclined to think, and obviously

I have some investment in this, so there are principle of the biases in the statement that the alignment of Weiqi strategy on the Chinese communist strategy in a particular time period, let me know of the period of the Chinese Revolution, roughly 1927 to roughly 1949, It was particularly close alignments of other strategy on playing chess is more metaphorical, a bit hazy. After all, what's the difference between a knight and a bishop in southwestern geopolitical setting? And so I think the wachian analogy cuts deeper and is frankly more faithful to subject by most chess analogies. There was a fine comment from Tom Schelling on my first book with a Swachie book that he'd seen,

I'm paraphrasing a reasonable number of examples where people try to prototype the strategy, you know, actual strategic situation, human strategic situation on the strategy of a game and, quote, this is the first one that really works. I mean, referring to my book, I think one has to at some point evaluate whether we're talking about a full-fledged detailed analogy, capable of detailed development and analytical elaboration or whether it's a passing metaphor, which might be evocative to some people, but little more than that. Let's transition to Sun Tzu, and I'm going to defer to your expertise and attempt to match

my pronunciation to yours. So the listenership for this show, I'm going to guess, you know, these are people who are listening to a show called School of War about strategy and military history. I think a lot of them probably have looked at Sun Su's book. I think a lot of them have read it, at least. in part, if not in whole. I'm going to further hazard a guess that they probably found it epigrammatic and interesting in part but confusing in whole and often a bit opaque and difficult to understand as a coherent argument or a series of larger coherent arguments. And in a way, Scott, your book is for them.

Your book is for these people. Amplifying what you say, and I agree with your observation. Basically, my book, follows a specific, develops a specific concept, and it could be thought of as tracing out the two lines of a V, as in V for Victory, and it's World War II. And so journey number one is going from the tip of the first tip of the V, left tip, let's call it, to the vertex, the base. And that involves a critical analytical reading of the whole Sunsa text, not just some of the text. And that matters because, frankly, the Sunza of modern literature is bestroon with studies which aspired to communicate the essence of Sunza and end up communicating maybe half a dozen things

Sunza said. The actual text, although very short, by many standards, involves about 400 propositions. And my objective was to read the text at that level, at basically shedding as much fly as I could on those 400 propositions based on what's known above early China and the probable context in which the text came to be. So that was the first focus of this first journey from the left tip to the base is basically reading the whole Sunza's text. The second is basically a balanced reading of the text. I'm not trying to basically make a case that what Sunzo really said is X, Y, Z, and you guys are gone all wrong. And the Sunza is might be expected of a longtime classic.

The Sunza text is awash in controversies about some of the specifics of the text. Actually, when one compares it with other way, text itself is a reasonably good shape. But there's still significant areas of controversy. An example would be with Sunza a real person. And there are major debates on that. And basically a lot of them boil down to simply raw statements of opinion. There's an attempt to partial evidence on both sides. I don't think that's resolvable.

To me, a good question to ask is, does this really matter for the military strategic substance? You know, maybe just agree to disagree and move on. And then the third guide to this while crawling journey, number one from the left tip to the base of the bee, is to basically demobilize help from all reasonable quarters. And they includes traditional commentators, includes modern analyses, includes archaeological finds and other stuff too. And the guiding idea there is that no single authority or perspective can be seen as or should be seen as having the last word on Sunza. Basically what we can piece together requires contributions from many sources and make use of them.

Journey number two, which is quite different, starts with the analyzed or concretically analyzed text, the base of the vertex, the full reading of the text, and journeys to the other tip of the V, and what that involves is extrapoling, what Sunso said, and applying it to other times and places worldwide. And there are cases where Sunsa's thinking is absolutely prescient for reasons which have to be fortuitous. For example, I see no possibility that Sunso could in any sense of it dissipated modern software and algorithms, but I think one of the most powerful environments for modern-day applications of Sunza. It's, in fact, digital environments, what AI, how AI, artificial intelligence, will change this as anybody's guess. But I think clearly there's an affinity to use a fancy word between Sunza's thinking and digital environments, applications.

And a second example of extrapolating Sunsa is that although Sunza's thought crystallized in an age of mass infantry army, probably the best way, although I didn't find its way into my book of making this vivid, as I recall once looking at a picture of World War I Russian prisoners of war, and you just have this very long river of individual ex-soldier, ex-Russian soldiers, and you get the feeling of what mass infantry army might mean at that point. There are thousands of them, and it comes across from the picture. So basically, Sunsa is focused in his time on mass infantry warfare. And in modern times, I think Sunsen's applications often work best when they are wielded by a small, nimble actor, could be, in principle, one individual or a small coterie of individuals who wage a difference

to borrow the title of a book by Davy Admiral, a different kind of war. And, the last section of my book entitled of Sunza for the 21st century develops this. Yet a third example of productive extrapolation is Sunza's unremitting advocacy for human intelligence, which with some updates for modern conditions, I think Projurms retains vitality. So there should be three examples of the longer list of examples of extrapolating the reading of the early war, to say China, Chinese text to modern conditions or simply other conditions at world history. One of the reasons I really like your book is, as you just sort of outline, the ideas you find in the book are alive for you. But at the same time, you don't reject the notion that understanding

them in their context, you know, their time and place originally is somehow a useless enterprise. You sort of pursue both enterprises. And I want to come back to the ideas themselves in a minute. But before we do that, can you just say a word for listeners about the China in which the semi-legendary, semi-quasi-historical Sun Su live, the warring states, China? What was that place like? Oh, bro. You alluded a little bit to what warfare then was like, but just paint us a bit of a picture. So there were a sizable numbers of number of states, which then, as the fortunes of war had it, became a shorter and shorter list. until one finally in the state of Chin,

marriage to conquer the entirety in basically around 221 BC. So bottom line, think of a multi-actor environment with a sizable number of states. Sunza is believed if he existed historically to have served the state of Wu, which was basically roughly located in the East China coast,

a little toward the south, but not massively toward the south. And warfare in that period it was very much a matter of a war of elites. It was ruler against ruler, again, a significant contrast case, which is why I often am a little concerned with blanket statements about the Chinese strategic tradition, very different environment from which Mao, while the Malay succeeded, which is essentially focused on a war by the common people

against some others of the common people and certainly against elites. As Sunza is about elite conflict. It's about basically two. rulers, each mobilizing a mass infantry army who go fight. The weapons of the period, the wonder weapon of the period, was probably the crossbow. And there's some fascinating, though candidly and conclusive, archaeological evidence that early China had basically a version of semi-aromatic crossbows, which illustrates the amount of, at least the amount of effort that went into developing weapon systems of that period. Artillery is less clear. It would be basically

machines that throw rocks, whether that was used extensively in field operations as opposed to siege operations is frankly not clear. There was frankly no, obviously, no aviation in as soon as it's notable for its lack of mention of any operations on water, including riverine warfare, which certainly existed in Chinese military history of that period, and even before. So the text is very much about land warfare, mass infantry armies serving the interests of the ruler. One of the classic, if you will, sociological tensions in that period was the tension between the ruler and his subordinate and agent general. And so the culture of that period basically encouraged a funny kind of duow to bust in modern times. They were a funny kind of

duality where the ruler was of all-powerful in the ruler's sphere and the general was all-powerful in the general sphere. And how they exactly came together was kind of finessed and obviously never fully worked out, but basically partly because of the very limited ability to do long-range communications of that period. Once the army and under the general left the territory of a particular state moved in the war Congress into another state. The ruler was basically out of touch. The ruler couldn't do much except flawed successes and gastagate failures. So bottom line, I think that gives a sense of what the war

of that era look like. I'm happy to amplify. The sources, by the way, are tricky. You never want there was certainly evolution of the art of war in what's called the warring states period, which lasted roughly from early 5th century down to 21 BC, a relatively long period. The texts that we have placed on a slightly earlier time period called the spring of autumn period, which should be early 6th century. Again, it's not quite clear where we should place sunza. Here I'm guided in part by a colleague, a very capable sonologist named even. Bruce Brooks, with whom I briefly overlapped to Harvard early in my career, who's now, I believe,

a Meritist professor, UMass, as a warring state's project, which I commend you, a very interesting project. But basically, Bruce identifies the sentence of text as not authored by one person, but accumulated in a period roughly 350 BC, give or take, to roughly 270 BC. So that gives some sense of the timeframes in our world, and certainly evolving in that period as before and to some extent after. Obviously, this period in the West is a period where, you know, Greek and Latin literature form this body of classics that up until fairly recently were central to education in the West and venerated and sort of a source of thinking really

even about contemporary issues. In China, traditionally and critically today, what's the status of the texts that are generated in China during this period, which is to say, what is the status of Sunza in Chinese thinking? So I think they, obviously the easy way out is we don't really know, the more direct answer your question is that there were certainly other military manuals of that vintage. In fact, Sunza famously in I think it's Chapter 7, cites a earlier military text to make a point about command and control system basically. So for that reason alone, the Sunza text was not unique. In the around the thousand AD or a little later, the Sung Dynasty, partly because I believe

it wasn't doing so well militarily, decided to create a canon of traditional Chinese strategy works. And there's sometimes the seven books. Some of the seven books date from the warring states period, although probably later in the warring state spirit than Sunza. There's also text by someone who has the same surname, namely Sun and the Sun bin. Sun bin is regarded, I think accurately so, is a later text than the Sunza text, whether the two Sunsons were related is again up for debate. But basically, the Sunsun bin text was long lost and archaeologically rediscovered. There are, frankly, is a wide range of people.

quality of the texts of that period. Quoting from memory, I recall, one archaeologically retrieved early text, which lists 13 of the 10 most important reasons for something. At that point, you're sort of scratching your head asking, just what's going on here. So the assumption, which is sometimes made in the West, though all these texts are enormously rich with wisdom is a little problematic. I think sons of leaped for pack by head and shoulders, maybe a bit more. So these three faces that you point to in your title and with which you organize a lot of your thinking of the book, the first face is sort of where we've been lingering in our conversation this far is what is the meaning of the teaching that's in this book in its

original context? You know, what did it have to say to Chinese readers fighting land wars in China roughly around the time when this book are the things that were ultimately collected into this book were produced. The second face, which I think is where things really start to get interesting for the general reader or the military reader in contemporary terms is, you know, what does Sun Su have to teach us today or teach in a timeless fashion, perhaps, about military strategy, about land warfare, right? And then the third face is a sort of, you know, analogical approach, you know, what can we then extrapolate from these teachings that would apply in other domains in cyber war, submarine war,

business competition, maybe grand strategy or diplomacy, you know, what, what are the analogies? And one of the things I, I, I like about your approach is you sort of translate things that are in the text to contemporary language in ways that in retrospect are obvious, but when you first encountered them seem a bit jarring. So your, your reference to the opening of the art of war as a comment on net assessment, for example, is a good example with that. Maybe let's start there, actually. I want to let's, you know, we don't obviously have enough time to, to actually unpack the art of war here, but maybe by way of introduction for people who might be inspired by your book to go back and have another go at the original.

You know, what is it, what could it possibly mean to say that a fifth century Chinese advisor and theorist of warfare was thinking about the same thing that Andy Marshall at the Pentagon in the mid to late 20th century was thinking about in terms of U.S. Soviet competition and net a set. First of all, just a background point, I knew Andy and was privileged to the arm, in fact, and been influenced by his thinking, which for among other things, I think, has a strand of connection with Sunso, which someone should develop in a full-fledged way, starting with the fact that both of them have heavily psychological approaches to conflict and pay a lot of attention to psychology. And Andy's case, going beyond individual psychology, to include organizational psychology, but this is about Sunza. And so let me not rein myself in. Let me rein myself in from coming further. My feeling is that the, well, I call the assessment material really involves thinking comparatively about the before you start a war, before the ruler in that era starts a war,

thinking comparatively about what the strengths and weaknesses and also the environmental conditions are that predisposed the success or failure. and a footnote, but maybe a very important footnote to that, is the last segment of Chapter 1 of Sunza, which appears to point to some forays into quantity of thinking about that assessment. Now, of course, in the modern era, that could be problematic. That's sometimes rudely called bean-counting. But in warings say China, I think it is a significant intellectual innovation, which suggests that the version of Nassessment thinking was taken very seriously and how they quantified the extent to which the qualification actually was possible, given the intangibles which Sunza tends to prioritize

as Nassessment exercise is not clear, but I think the spirit of NAN assessment is very clearly present in the Sunza text, and the best of my knowledge, the earliest text, which has a assessment component in any civilization, frankly, Chinese or early. Chinese or other. I think beyond that, what is quite clear from Shunza's basically investment in NASSpa activity is the extent to which he really includes but does not privilege excessively the counting of the number of troops and the number of weapons and et cetera. So there's a lot of probably the majority of the strands of the NASSpa exercise involve in TANSA. rather than tangibles, which again makes doubly intriguing the attempt to quantify if it existed.

So I think one of the further points of merits being made is that sometimes the Sunsa text's interest in intelligence matters is limited to or focused on the espionage chapter, the last chapter we have, the Sunsor 13 chapter. And in reality, of course, the assessment as it could be regarded as a major intelligence analysis activity, and that's given a major coverage in the first chapter of the text. So the Sunza, the intelligence person isn't limited to Sunza 13. They also include Sunza 1. Well, since you raised the question of intelligence, you know, an espionage, et cetera, you know, another, if anyone knows anything about Sunza, it's that he favors. trickery, deception, winning without fighting. And then again, this becomes a kind of almost cliche view. And then it's often put in sort of unhelpful context.

Like this is a quote unquote Eastern way of war. And in the West, we don't do this sort of thing. We're more straightforward. In the East, this is how they are. They're more about maneuver. We're more about attrition. We know we should study this. And all this is pretty flimsy, of course.

There's plenty of attrition and suffering and dunderheadedness in Eastern warfare and plenty of maneuver and deception and so forth in Western warfare. That all said, there is a there. Sunza is a theorist of trickery and deception. Say a bit about that, would you, and say a bit about the role of plays in the overall argument? Sure. What I would point to there is I'm blocking on which chapter, I think it's the Sunsa Five. Don't hold me. Basically, Sunza's also addition to the famous highly we quoted statements, all wars based on deception, etc., also propounds in this separate passage a mix of straightforward and cunning or surprise moves. So straightforward is Zhang, fourth tone, cunning and surprise of chi, second tone.

And so these terms defy ready translation into English. There are a variety of translations, but basically, Jung means conventional, up the middle, in military terms, force on force, cunning and surprise or chi, often means deception. It could mean other things too, but the key to this passage is as soon as regards both as essential. neither can be neglected. Success comes from the combinatorics of harmonizing them and applying them in a coordinated way,

which often involves switching Jung to Chi to Jung, and that means major parts of those important parts of thinking, it has to do with switchings, which I don't think as a point to as others of previous analysts, for the most part, picked up on at all.

So I think by own intuitive sense, And since as soon as I'm thinking about deception, his most productably approach in a jun versus chi or combinatorics thereof context, rather than deception being the sole vehicle by which you've accomplished your objectives, I think the further key point is that chi, as I mentioned, it can subsume deception and many interpretations would. But it can also apply, for example, to logistics.

So I think soon as there's repeated affirmations, So you should live off the enemy, basically plunder fertile fields, et cetera, is a version of Chi applied to logistics, rather than maintaining your own massive logistics establishment, which has to transport supplies all the way back to home base, wherever that is. Consider doing the more clever thing, which is living off the enemy. Of course, that's a prescription, which doesn't always work, but sometimes it does witness marching through Georgia. It's striking, and you point this out that despite what we might imagine about the warfare of the period of its composition, there's not a lot of talk about siegecraft, you know, the taking of cities, the sort of, you know, deliberate, expensive, bloody work of that kind of thing. But, you know, obviously this is a major feature of pre-modern warfare or indeed early modern warfare. Why do you think it's so absent from the book? Here, as with all carifactuals, once in the realm of speculation,

the speculation which is most preoccupied is a different carfactoral, which is why since it gives little attention to operations on water, either blue sea naval operations or brown water, riverine operations. What you raise is another interesting deficiency, I think to the extent we can piece together as soon as position, from the available text, it is that to basically attack cities only as a last resort, which suggests that the siege warfare of that time was still basically not as quite as powerful, as the ability of the defense to defend the city. This ties to the early evolution of so-called

world cities in China, which essentially includes basically defensive mechanisms that would be used to against an army, which is investing in the city and trying to conquer it. So I think since here, to some extent, takes refuge in the brevity of the text. If it was a much longer text than the order of Klausowitz, he would have had to say something about siege operations. He doesn't because he views basically siege operations as the last refuge of the inferior general. I'm being a little pejorative there, but I think the idea is there is rather clearly there. So there are gaps in some. So there's no question. Going back in the espionage chapter, there is a notable deficit of how you actually use spies. There are classification of spies.

There's a considerable amount of tribute to the benefit of effective spying or buying apparatus, but there's not a lot about what to some, some terminology is called dread graft. Right. And indeed, you know, a purpose of the book seems to be. to counsel against protraction and getting locked into expensive struggles. You want, as you point out, cheapness, you want resolution. You want to achieve it in the most cost-effective manner, which in a way seems very sensible. In another way, you know, is obviously not the normal run of military thinking, depending on the time and place you're talking about.

My point is it could be, you know, rather than speak of a Chinese strategic tradition of which is the orer text, one could imagine this even being kind of. of a contrarian book designed to push a particular point of view. Yeah, yeah, for example, and by the way, that point has been May, one of the things about re-engaging as I did writing this book with a psychological erasure that contains a sizable number of very bright points. One of the bright points is that when something is emphasized the text, does that mean that in the world that the text is coming on, it was very common, therefore had to be emphasized

because it was commonness, or very rare because they had to be, but it was so basically counterfactual to what usual practices were then that it merits attention. I think the key, one key I would stress, and I think arguably one of the more important takehomes from Sunsa is this idea of cheapness, which possibly to succumb to the Western modern Westerners, quantify everything, to me often means a 10 to 1 advantage or something like that, order of magnitude advantage.

And turning, going through the text, there's quite a bit of emphasis on outwires and even a little bit of quantitative emphasis on order of magnitude disparities. So cheapness is a significant sort of theme. It relates to the text as a vehicle for encouraging, thinking outside. the box, thinking basically about options you never thought before, which, hey, might work, some might work. There's, of course, no guarantees, but it is incitement or invitation, perhaps fair word, to imagination, which is unusual in military texts.

And although I'm by no means knowledgeable about early Western military texts as I am about Sunza, I certainly haven't seen a few names come to mind as Clepia Dota, us, fronten us, a few others. I haven't seen anything quite as imaginative in inviting, expanding our imaginations as the sons of text. It's more work-a-day warfare, if you will. Final question for you, really about the premise of your project, fundamentally, given that, you know, the conventional wisdom is that this is a cobbled together book with multiple sources, which seems, you know, likely. And given its manifestly sort of disaggregated character, though I guess that word actually kind of puts a thumb on the scales.

You insist that it is aggregable. You can put it together, and as you put it, you have an axiomatic acceptance of its unity. Why? Why do you feel so strongly about that? They are, to some extent, and that is, you know, put your finger on something, which there were the argument or for a view could be challenged. But my counter to that is the sense of text had an indivisible reputation through two-plus millennial Chinese history.

And here I think it's worth mentioning for purposes of just anchoring this part of the conversation that the traditional Chinese culture was very much a culture of memorization. So people would memorize far longer texts than the Sunza, even one or two orders of angitude longer. And so I suspect all those, all the Sunza text was never part of the Confucian canon, not being basically meeting the criteria for said canon. admission to said canon, yet it was probably memorized by a lot of traditional Chinese literati and generals, some generals and others, down through the centuries. And so if you're memorizing a text, you probably don't just memorize chapters 1, 7, and 11.

You memorize the whole thing. And that, in turn, plays a foundation for drawing on all the text in a unified way rather than just some of the text and applying it. Scott Borman, author of Three Faces of Sunza, Analyzing Sunza's Out of War, Emanuel on Strategy. It's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Delighted. My pleasure. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.